Home About Icon LinkedIn Icon Medium
Subscribe with Google

Subscribe with Google is a global initiative that was launched in March 2018 to support journalism thrive in a digital age. According to Google, they aim to elevate and strengthen quality journalism and empower news organisations through technological innovation. Google have been holding working groups with participants from nearly 60 news organizations across 18 countries to review their ideas and collect feedback, and the Financial Times was approached to be a launch partner. You can read an official announcement from Google here .

Business goals for the FT

  • To improve the conversion rate on the FT paywall from frictionless sign-in and payment via SwG.
  • Increase engagement of subscribers by improved search visibility.

Outcomes

1. FT released social sign in with Google in May 2018 as the part of Subscribe with Google initiative, and a big number of people started using social log in on a daily basis.

2. A/B test with the barrier page that had 'Subscribe with Google' button showed that there was no impact on the conversion from the paywall in the variant but those who started Subscribe with Google journey, completed the purchase at a higher rate.

User needs

  • It is easy to subscribe for people who already have set up payments via Google.
  • It is easy to sign in with Google account, and to stay logged in on multiple devices. It is also easy to use sign in with Google even if you didn’t subscribe via Google, and on average there are 1000 people who use social log in on a daily basis on ft.com.
  • It is easy to cancel from the Google account without any need to contact Customer Services, and this will also be an interesting test case to understand the impact on retention and cancellation rates.
  • A great unique selling point is that Google will recognise an FT subscriber and reflect this in the prominence of the FT articles in search results.

Responsibilities

  • Mapping user journeys and edge cases.
  • Wireframing.
  • Prototyping.
  • User research (4 rounds of guerilla testing).
  • UI design.


Team


SwG is a great example of team collaboration across the business, and it was a great combined effort from 9 teams within the FT, not including teams from Google. I was the only and lead UX designer from the FT side on this project.

Process


FT came onboard as trusted testers and proactively influenced development of the product. The team had weekly meetings with the Google team which was dialling in from across the US. The dedicated teams from the FT and Google were on the journey together exploring edge cases and different scenarios. For example, Google supports payments in local currencies in 137 countries while FT only supports 6 currencies which are local in 36 countries. Google allowed us to run user research activities, and I facilitated guerilla usability testing in the coffee shops. Myself and a product owner brought the insights back to Google, and some of the learnings influenced the design and user experience of the product.
The challenges were around identifying MVP, edge case scenarios (as Google only presented "a happy path" user journey), user research and understanding what team works on what part of the journey from Google or FT side. The project had 3 big chunks of work: building 'Sign in with Google' (FT.com didn't have any social login prior to this initiative), building subscription flow and building linking accounts. I was involved in the first 2 stages of work.

As a user experience designer in collaboration with the tech leads from several teams, I produced onsite and offsite user journeys so it was easier for us to decide what went into MVP, want went to the A/B testing and what was left for post-launch.
Early flows allowed to identify the parts of the process.


Scenario of smooth and frictionless subscription.


Edge case scenarios when users would get an error on the FT.com.


Email user journeys for both annual and montly payment options.


A product decision was to allow using 'Sign in with Google' feature to the FT subscribers and not just anyone who has a Google account. I needed to think about how to communicate that on the log in page as well as about a user journey and error messaging for those who happened to have an FT subscription with their Google account but for some reason had other Google accounts and mixed them up. At this stage I did usability testing with the FT colleagues in the building who didn't have any information to the project, and to remove any connection to the FT.com as a digital product (as it could bias the responses), I created a prototype shown below just to bring the focus on the journey and the message.

A user journey of the 'Sign in with Google' designed as the New York Times log in page.


After several usability testing sessions in the coffeeshop together with the designers who worked on the FT apps I landed on the journey that worked well and improved the copy in collaboration with the copywriter that was clear enough to people to get through.


1. Web sign in page communicating that 'Sign in with Google' is only available for the FT subscribers;
2. System message in scenario when a user clicked on 'Sign in with Google' and FT.com doesn't recognise an email address in the subscribers' database;
3. System message that is shown after 30 minutes of inactivity of the user when they try to access 'My account' section.


The second part of work was to design and build the subscription flow. A lot of functionality was already provided by Google so FT engineers just needed to integrate it with the internal FT systems. From my side, I needed to make sure that the journey felt smooth for the users when they transitioned from the Google screens to the FT screens. Google allowed us to run our own research initiatives outside the FT offices so I and the product manager on the team went out to do the coffeeshop testing.

When we interviewed users we were trying to find answers to the questions:
- When people see Google payment screen, do they understand whose policies they are accepting?
- Do they know what organisation to contact if they have problems with their subscription or if they want to cancel?
- Where is the optimal point to surface GDPR consent? (is it straight away after the payment screen or at a later point of the journey - i.e. next visit)
- How will people react to error messages on their sign in journey both on mobile web and in the app? Will they understand the message?
- What will they do to complete the task of signing in?

One of the findings was that the majority of participants were not familiar with the brand GPay, were not sure if it was Google Pay or something else, imagined GPay being only in-app feature and therefore wouldn’t choose ‘Subscribe with GPay’ option. We shared what we have learnt with Google, and they provided the new clearer design of their CTA.


Insights from usability testing informed change in the CTA.

A mobile prototype to test the copy communicating that Google charges in local currency.
As part of this initiative we've also redesigned and implemented FT confirmation service emails.

Confirmation FT service email, before and after.
© Olga Flippence, 2025